Making a Golden Snitch

Our chapter of Sigma Tau Delta is having a penny wars race to see which book will be selected for our annual marathon reading event. As a result, I nominated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and decided to create a golden snitch out of papier-mache hoping to entice people to vote for Harry Potter! I wanted to keep the golden snitch as authentic to the novels as possible, but it was sort of difficult with my limited crafting abilities. In case you ever want to create your own golden snitch, these are the steps I used:

1. Buy a plastic bowl for the base. The reason I use a bowl on the bottom is for stability.

2. Blow up a balloon and place the balloon in the bowl.

3. In another bowl, combine 2 parts water for 1 part flour. Mix.

4. Dip strips of newspaper in the water/flour mixture and cover the balloon and bowl.

5. Let dry in between layers.

6. Once there are enough layers and the papier-mache has dried, paint the snitch gold!

The end result:

And of course, further enticing people to vote for Harry Potter, I placed a sheet of paper in front of the snitch with a quote from Deathly Hallows: "I open at the close." Below is a picture of me with my golden snitch!

Happy crafting!

Spring Cleaning: Bookcase Edition

I'm in the process of reorganizing my family bookcase...although commandeering is probably the better term to use. While my mother has insisted that I cannot remove the 1995 encyclopedia set that we have on the bottom shelf, I have managed to free the top four shelves for my own use. After staring at the boxes and boxes of books that I have, I'm not sure how best to organize the books. Should I alphabetize by author? Should I organize based on reading level? Should I arrange according to genre?

In a way, I feel like Liesel from The Book Thief as she runs up and down the rows of books in the mayor's wife's library. So many choices...so many options!

As a future teacher I know it might be valuable to organize my books based on reading level, but I haven't read all of the books I own yet, so determining the reading level of each text might take a great deal of time and research. In comparison, arranging the books according to genre might help me make reading recommendations to my students next year. However, many books span multiple genres, like Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. (Is it fantasy or is it science fiction?!?) If I organize by author then I can always find a book that I'm looking for without worrying about its location.

One of the reasons I'm devoting so much time to this spring cleaning project is that I'm not sure what my job situation will be like next year. As a new teacher, there is no guarantee I will have my own classroom. If I had my own classroom (with a nice set of bookshelves), I could easily transfer the books from my private collection to the classroom. However, if I do not have a space to call my own, I might need to keep my book collection at home and bring in a handful of recommendations at times.

Any suggestions as to how I can best reorganize my books?

Teaching Drama in the Classroom

While I have not acted in a play since I played an angel in my church's Christmas pageant about ten years ago, I know I would be capable of teaching drama to my students, courtesy of my recent experience at a How-To-Teach seminar. Ashley G, a teacher from New Jersey, came to TCNJ to share methods for teaching drama to students. She uses the play, The Miracle Worker, in order to teach the students about stage directions, prop usage, etc.

Before beginning the unit, to test students' prior knowledge, Ms. G gives each student a red strip with Helen Keller's name on it and a blue strip with Annie Sullivan's name on it. She asks biographical questions about each person, and the students raise the corresponding strip. Quickly, Ms. G can look around the room and survey which students know which pieces of information.

Also, before they begin reading The Miracle Worker, the students listen to an NPR recording from 2004 in which playwright William Gibson explains his motivation for writing The Miracle Worker. Click here to listen to Gibson's NPR interview.

For the students' final assessment, Ms. G divides the students into groups of four or five. Then, she lets the students choose which roles they want. (Throughout the unit, Ms. G spends time teaching the students about the different theater roles, such as prop master and director, so that by the time they are ready to complete their final assessment, they understand each of the roles and can choose the one they want.) Once all of the students have their roles Ms. G passes out "Admit One" backstage passes with the name of their role and its description (see above picture).

I would love to adapt this final project in my classroom for teaching Shakespearean plays as well!

The Hunger Games Challenge

Taylor Swift, Katy Perry...Suzanne Collins? It may seem odd, but Young Adult Literature author, Suzanne Collins, was nominated by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top entertainers of 2010 right alongside Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. Odd? Perhaps. Awesome? Definitely! Oh yeah, and Stieg Larsson was also on the list of top entertainers as well. (If you're unfamiliar with Larsson, he is the Swedish author who died in 2004, whose crime novels were published posthumously in the United States---The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.)

Last semester while I was student teaching, I shared this information with my students and they wanted to learn more about Suzanne Collins. What books has she written? What are her novels about? Her Hunger Games trilogy is making Collins into a household name. (She has already written a screenplay for the novel to be turned into a movie.)

In order to share my Hunger Games obsession with Sigma Tau Delta members, I created "The Hunger Games Challenge," in which I have challenged all of our Sigma Tau Delta members to read the first novel in the trilogy, The Hunger Games, by April 27th. I feel as if Young Adult Literature gets a bad rep; often it isn't considered "real" Literature with a capitol L. However, my goal is to change peoples' perceptions of YA Lit and encourage them to appreciate it as its own literary genre.

If you are interested in learning a bit more about The Hunger Games, check out the Book Trailer I made for the novel.

TAKE THE CHALLENGE! READ THE HUNGER GAMES!

The Book Thief

Sadly, I must admit that I was not expecting Markus Zusak's The Book Thief to be such a compelling novel. As an English Major, I am ashamed to admit that I thought that all of the Holocaust books and Literature I read in middle school, high school, and college would provide me with enough of a grasp of the time period. I am ashamed.

Zusak's The Book Thief proved me wrong about Holocaust Literature on a multitude of levels. First of all, as a work of historical fiction (and also as a Young Adult text--although there is some controversy as to this text's classification) I was expecting the main character to be a young girl or boy. However, the entire story is narrated by "Death" and it follows Liesel, a German girl living during the Holocaust. When she is brought to live with foster p

arents who struggle to make ends meet, Liesel tries to have a carefree childhood but faces many obstacles. Although the story was narrated by Death, the other characters I read about were round, complex characters.

If you want to hear Zusak explaining his inspiration for penning The Book Thief, please watch the following YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7B8ioiZz7M

The Book Thief is a must-read! No matter how many texts you have read that take place during this time period, none can compare to the emotional rollercoater that you will experience while reading Zusak's masterpiece!

Building Up My Young Adult Lit Arsenal

Next semester at TCNJ (my final semester at TCNJ! YIKES!) I will be taking LIT 310. Translation: Lit for Young Readers with Dr. Meixer. Student teaching in a middle school this semester made me realize that I need to quickly expand my arsenal of Young Adult authors and novels so that I can provide reading recommendations to my students. This past semester, the students were the ones recommending most of the books to me! Oh the irony!

Courtesy of my students I have now grown to love Suzanne Collins and The Hunger Games trilogy. I even made my very own book trailer for the first novel, The Hunger Games, which I shared with my students. (You can view my book trailer at the following link: Ms. C's Hunger Games Book Trailer.)

Anyway, the 16 books that I will be reading with Dr. Meixner for LIT 310 are (in no particular order):

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Love that Dog by Sharon Creech
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling
• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
• The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block
• Pedro and Me by Winick (a graphic novel)
• Poetry Speaks Who I Am by Paschen (poetry anthology)
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• Thirteen by Howe (short story collection)
• Getting Away with Murder by Crowe
• The Misfits by James Howe
• The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich
• Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

I've already read a bunch of these novels, but I'm looking forward to reading them from a new perspective: that of a future English teacher. I particularly like how the novels span from elementary level texts to high school level texts.

I'm especially excited to read Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. My former seventh and eighth grade students will be reading that novel in the spring.

It's safe to say I will definitely add to my YA Lit arsenal after taking this class.

Digital Book Trailers

I am so proud of my students for creating incredible digital book trailers for their last Book Talks. Rather than forcing the students to all write a summary of the book to share with the class, I let the students unleash their creativity for this assignment. Click on the following link to view one of my student's incredible book trailers:

Student-created book trailer for I Heart You, You Haunt Me